


Forgive Me

by hoc_voluerunt



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Emotional Maturity, Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 04:12:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1115357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoc_voluerunt/pseuds/hoc_voluerunt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein John's reaction is entirely reasonable and mature, and Sherlock is slightly less of an emotionally abusive piece of mould on a bad slice of cheese.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forgive Me

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler alert for series three, episode one, 'The Empty Hearse'. Extra spoiler alert: I hated the episode. Short, quick, hastily-written fix-it fic for that fucking awful penultimate scene.

            “Think,” John urges, because it’s their only hope, Sherlock must have it stored in there somewhere. If he can just dig it up and stop the bomb and get them out of this, they can deal with all the rest later, they just need to survive – _“Think!”_

            But Sherlock’s face is contracting in frustration, and there are futile noises escaping his throat, and when he shouts and opens his eyes, his face is not one of discovery and relief – oh, no, John would recognise that face anywhere, he’s seen it so many times – but a blank mask of disappointment.

            He doesn’t know how to save them.

            He drops his hands, and stares at John, and doesn’t say a word.

            “Oh my God.” John reels away from him, and begins again to pace, as Sherlock strips off his scarf and drops to the floor, um-ing and ah-ing as his hands flit over the bomb between his knees. “This is it.” The realisation hits him, and he stares into space and thinks, and whispers: “Oh my God.”

            He’s about to die, and Sherlock’s barely been back for _days,_ and he never even proposed to Mary properly, and his heart feels like it’s going to tear in two, and it’s _all Sherlock Holmes’ fault._

            He turns around, at the same time that Sherlock’s fumbling stops, and he lifts his head, still on his hands and knees, to stare again at John – John, whom he lied to, and laughed at, and dragged into this whole mess, and _oh, God –_

            “I’m sorry.”

            He whispers it like a terrible confession, and it’s so unlike any of the ‘sorry’s he’s said before, so unlike every time he tried to repent, because this, _this –_ this isn’t about John letting him in any more. They’re going to die, this is it, and all he wants, all he wants after all those stupid quips about his moustache, and the bonfire, and the cases, is absolution.

            John squeezes shut his eyes, and looks away for a moment, and bites out: “What?”

            “I ca— I can’t do it, John.” There are tears in his eyes, and they’re so fucking real that it hurts. “I don’t know how.” He pushes up onto his knees. “Forgive me,” he begs, clasping his hands. John’s replying voice is a hollow, broken thing.

_“What?”_

            If Sherlock looks any longer at John’s terrible, terrifying face, he feels he might shatter. “Please, John,” he says, “forgive me.” His hands are in prayer below his chin, but for once, it’s not for thinking. He needs words, but they’re not coming; he needs a way out, but he won’t get one. “For all the hurt that I caused you.”

            “No, no no no, this is a trick,” John hisses, hysteria carefully repressed. Sherlock tries to protest, but he backs away, still growling. “Another one of your bloody tricks. You’re just trying to make me say something nice.”

            Sherlock laughs just once, because at any other time, _that would have been true,_ and God, what does that make him?

            “Not this time.”

            “It’s just to make _you_ look good,” John insists, “even though you behaved like – …”

            He has to stop, has to cut himself off with a hiss and flattened lips, like what Sherlock did is too much for words; Sherlock is just now realising that perhaps it was.

            John steps away, looks away from him, and Sherlock relents – heaves himself back with one of the rails behind him. John is fuming, and while Sherlock lurches, he rests his weight on one of the bars at his side, and breathes hard. Just as the carriage _(car)_ goes still, however, John stamps at the floor with one foot, and whispers, like a secret is being wrenched out of him:

_“I wanted you not to be dead.”_

            Sherlock can’t find it in himself to argue, to snap, to even fake a kind of lightness he cannot feel. “Yeah, well,” he drawls, settling on his knees, “be careful what you wish for.” He looks at John and he means it, Jesus Christ, _he means it._ “If I hadn’t come back, you wouldn’t be standing there, and –” John is pacing, God, why can’t he _keep still_ – “you’d still have a future –” his throat is thick – “with Mary –”

            “Yeah –” John turns, pointing an accusatory finger at him – “I know.”

            Sherlock’s fist is against his mouth, and he’s so caught up in that very fact that he doesn’t realise John’s turned away and back again until he’s speaking, harsh breaths and a voice like gravel over the top.

            “Look,” he grates, “I find it – difficult. I find it difficult this sort of stuff.”

            Sherlock nods; forces himself to look up, if just for a moment. “I know.”

            John breathes out; looks up; squares his shoulders.

            “I can’t forgive you.”

            Sherlock’s eyes fall on John, as his heart sinks into his gut and his throat feels like it’s closing up.

            “You lied,” John continues, in that same panting, aching voice – “you made me watch, then let me think – you were everything I had, Sherlock, the best thing, the best, the _wisest –_ ” He breathes in; out. “So I can’t,” he says. “I just can’t.”

            Sherlock knows he has paled beyond belief; knows his mouth is hanging open and his cheeks are wet; he knows it was all for nothing. He endured distance, and danger, and dragged John from a fire with his own hands, for nothing.

            “But you know what?” John adds, forcing himself so obviously to keep looking at Sherlock’s broken-open face. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. That doesn’t mean – I can’t keep –” His mouth closes; he breathes hard. “It doesn’t mean we should just _give up.”_

            Suddenly, he’s on his knees – _why is he on his knees?_ – and Sherlock is staring, staring, staring as his gloved hands go to the bomb between them; as he rips off the gloves with his teeth and keeps fumbling, looking for wires, buttons, anything.

            Sherlock frowns at him, bewildered. “I thought you _weren’t_ in bomb disposal?”

            “Don’t care,” John snaps, bending over the device and digging his hands down under the casing. “Watched a few defusions, and I’m desperate enough to try –” Very suddenly, his hands stop searching, and his entire being stills. “Oh my God.”

            Sherlock freezes, face falling.

            “What?”

            “Jesus _Christ –”_

            “What, _what?”_ Sherlock demands darting forward, back onto his hands and knees on the other side of the hole in the floor. John’s shoulder tenses, and small click is heard – and when John pulls back to stare at the timer, the red numbers have stilled, flickering between 0:28 and 0:29.

            John sits back on his heels, and after a shuddering, white-bright moment, Sherlock crumbles. He bends at the middle, with his arms wrapped around himself and his forehead to his knees, and sobs. It’s undignified, and messy, and awful, but he cannot help himself. John hasn’t forgiven him – _won’t_ forgive him – but, like the unbelievable, extraordinary person he is, he’s given them a chance.

            “You didn’t notice,” John pants above him, “the _fucking off switch.”_

            Against all reason, a laugh chokes its way out of Sherlock’s throat; and, against all probability, an answering one falls from John’s lips. It is short, and stilted, but there: a promise Sherlock swears he’ll keep. John rests one bare hand on Sherlock’s sweat-damp head, and though his fingers are tense and his palm without comfort, the gesture is one of blessed quietude.

            “Call the police, Sherlock,” he breathes. “Call the fucking police.”


End file.
